Animal
by Aiko Isari
Summary: That is all she is, it and an animal. She wakes and thinks of that.


_Warning for harm to minors, child abuse, complete memory loss, fear, anxiety, animalistic behavior. slight possible spoilers._

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Folder is a mostly awful place.

Anyone at Tamer Union could have told you that. As a child, Mirei went there a scarce amount of times. After her accident, she had landed there. She had still been small then, small but growing and useful and fertile. Early bloomer, they said. A mutt too, with no standards. They had sneered, so freely, at her.

None of that had been comprehensible to her. Their scents however, she understood those.

When she had her accident, nearly everything had been lost. Her sight, her name, her manners, all of it, lost. But she had always been a quick learner, and always had powerful instincts. What she remembered best was the fear. The fear of monsters.

The way to keep them away, she found quickly, was to make them afraid. So she did, scratching and biting and eventually freezing them alive.

There weren't many human colonies in Folder. They were kind until she couldn't speak. They were kind until she made mewl sounds like a cat. Animal, most would say. The kind ones, the ones who kept her anyway, were kicked even harder. She was kicked until she squealed and their expressions changed to something worse.

She didn't know what Union Tamers were at the time, but they would leave things where they knew she would burrow. Blankets or food, strange objects (bottles) with water.

She turned many of the blankets into clothes. She never saw the people who left them. She wanted to, when she remembered. But at the time, her brain was still fractured. She didn't see any of them for many centuries.

The Digimon were sometimes kind. She saw a brown bear who wiped the mud from her back and a little devil who carried her across the cliffside.

Folder could be ruthless.

The dragons were the worst.

Well, them and the insects. Sometimes, they worked together.

She remembered little of any of it but the ice-pain and the wishing. So much wishing, so much dreaming, but pain too. Pain and the crush warp like there was something more in her, much more, and the gouge of the slash marks on her stomach, the thing she would later learn was the letter M.

M for Miracles.

Even then it didn't matter. Even then. Her body betrayed her even then.

Ice-heat-pain-end. Endless time, endless lonely cry-out, the loneliness was the worst part because she didn't know what it was but the gap in there like a lost tooth but bigger until it grew so wide everything was eaten up. Nothing left. swallowed up in it. Even the little godling in her was all gone.

Mirei woke up, face wet. She scrubbed her eyes with her knuckles, watching the rain pour outside of her home. She watched the night thunder and her body thrummed with it, with old memories telling her to go out and run-

The creaking of the reed-crib made her take pause. She let out a tiny sob out loud. Her body wasn't betraying her now. It already had, remembered lesson one, remembered the fear. They all said humans were the apex predator for their intelligence, for their clever nature. She knew that was a lie, deep down. But all she thought of now was that she was anything but a human then. She was just an animal, acting on fear and heat and pain all at once, instead of coherency.

Everything was gone for that.

She shuddered with the force of feeling, the thing that her body had denied, rebelled, that she had rebelled, until she had to make herself stand up. Mirei walked, footfalls dead silent, to the crib. Sleeping.

Dark skin, deep hair, her eyes when they were open, a mutt just like her. That had been one of the few things that caused people to hesitate. Dark skin. Lack of features. Being an _it_ had saved some part of her. No one else would ever say so. Being an _it_ and being a heartless one had saved her.

It wouldn't save her songbird. _Their_ songbird. Their. If she could find him, bring him home or he would come. If.

No. No. Noo. Don't be stupid. She chewed on her lips. She had to believe. Had to make it possible, had to work to find a way. Fate didn't work like this. The myriad wasn't like this. It understood. She could change it. She had to change it. For him.

She had been an it. Mirei bit again, this time at her thumb, placed her bleeding thumb on the wood. He would not be. He would never think that way. She would never let him come close. Never. Not her son. Not their boy, not any of their children. None would be beneath _anyone._ Lark most of all.

The baby began to squirm and mewl, sweet sounds, nose twitching at copper-blood-smell. His mewls sharpened with the natural concern. The baby knows, they always do. Mirei reaches down and picks him up. He coos. Coos and tries to mimic her purrs. Just like her, father had said.

Sock footsteps close and she pauses. Mirei hears the knuckle rap. She wipes her eyes, heals her thumb. Rii will know of course. But she'll let Mirei pretend for a little while. While the children are awake. Then she'll tell Mirei all her thoughts are wrong. All of them are lies and important but lies and that she is a person and she is still hurt and lonely and so many other things that Mirei knows are true. She needs to hear them just like all people sometimes simply need to hear the sun and see the rain. And maybe they'll help each other and then go out into the rain, like they used to and play with the castle and catch the lightning in their hands until it burns.

Then they'll bathe and go to bed and Binary will transform a little more and maybe this this time, she'll be able to hug her father for more than a couple of moments. And maybe the lonely gap space in her chest will shrink again, this time into a _him_ -shaped hole that will let her keep going with her life and meet him without being a wreck because he's not next to her.

 _Please believe, please wait, please hear me. Once more, even if you need to let go, just let me make our miracle one more time._

 _Let me be a person one more time._

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 _ **A/N:** _ AANNNNNNGGGGSTTTTTT.

*coughs* Yep, angst, Random angst that I liked and wanted to post super badly. Because Mirei is favorite. Anyway, please enjoy and let me know what you think.

 **Challenges:** Ultimate Sleuth 1.4 - Write a character study, Diversity Writing Challenge D19. write using the flashback device


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